I try to avoid exposing myself to Rush Limbaugh too much because he tends to make my brain eat itself in a desperate attempt to get the hell away from the information I’m throwing at it. By and large I consider him less of a “political pundit” and more of a “brain-dead semi-comedian”. The problem isn’t Rush though, it’s his listeners.
So when he goes on this giant diatribe about a reporter asking Barack Obama if he’d investigate the US military over torture, I get genuinely concerned that idiotic listeners will take statements like this seriously.
After the administration’s left office, to pursue an investigation that might lead to criminal indictments for war crimes and other things. We used to do that to the Nazis. We did do that to the Nazis, the Nuremberg Trials and so forth. This is who today’s modern liberals are. Now, Obama’s got this wacko reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News who’s obviously not a reporter. He is a leftist who happens to have secured a job in journalism, and he’s got an agenda, and the agenda is right out of the cliched story line of the Drive-By Media, that we are a murderous, raping, torturing nation and that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell have to pay. This is all about creating the notion in as many people’s minds that our country is criminal, is in a constant state of decline, and we are not worth our reputation as the world’s greatest superpower.
First of all, look at his first sentence there. An investigation “after the administration” has left. He says this as though “the administration” were America and another isn’t taking its place. He then goes on with his boilerplate “the left wants to act like America is evil” diatribe.
Only there’s a gigantic, glaring flaw with his “logic”. Ignoring the fact that all the reporter did was ask a simple question, what Limbaugh (and his dittoheads) seem incapable of wrapping their brains around is that Bush is not America. The United States is not the same as who leads it for these few years.
Bush and Cheney could have spent every single day of their reign stomping on puppies and setting children on fire and that would still not mean that America is the nation of puppy stomping and child roasting. It would mean that our great nation was briefly run by puppy-stompers and baby-roasters. To avoid prosecuting them as such for fear of how poorly it would reflect on our image is stupid for two reasons.
The first is obvious: that it looks a hell of a lot worse to let the crimes go without punishment than it does to attempt to hide them (remember, the coverup is worse than the crime). The second is sneaky, but no less important: the world already knows what we’ve done, if we want to salvage our image, it might be a good idea for the incoming administration to at least make an attempt to dress the wounds inflicted by his predecessor.
As the United States is not a dictatorship, it is not defined by single leaders. You can call the policies and attitudes of a dictatorship by its dictator. However, the United States is better defined by ideals, not by individuals. And ideals are determined over the long haul, not the short term. “America” is not Bush’s policies any more than “America” was Clinton’s.
This is why I never blame “America” for what happens under Bush’s control. He is not America. Prosecuting him is not faulting “America” for his crimes, it is faulting him for them. By doing so, we show that America is better than that, and that we do not believe the country can be seen as endorsing, or even accepting, the actions taken by those at its helm during the past term.
Of course, this is the other reason I look forward to an Obama presidency. I really, really want to see Limbaugh, et al, apply that same logic to a Democratic administration, or if they’ll simply go on the attack and call the Democrat “un-American” in some manner.
Actually I know the answer to that question already, but I still want to see it happen.
2 responses so far ↓
Rechan // June 13, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I can’t wait for Obama to be the president, so we can stop this whole “You can’t say anything negative whatsoever about the COMMANDER IN CHIEF I tell you what!”
It’ll be so nice when The President != America again.
ENRICO_49 // June 13, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Hanlon: When you consider the closed feedback loop that the extreme, absolutist faction of the GOP are forced to reside in; so they can attempt to process and dampen down the cognitive dissonance that constantly refutes every major foreign and domestic policy they have ceaselessly conspired to inflict on society at large. You can than see the need for the parallel universe of wingnut information sources.
This is the medium in which moonbat GOP info-tainers like Limbaugh find their purpose. This is where disinformation is spoken and takes on a life of its very own. Any inaccuracy, innuendo, aspersion, exaggeration, half truth, and naked lie are fed to the unquestioning base as if it were incontrovertible truth from on high.
The continued success of performers like Limbaugh speaks directly to the neurosis that afflicts the extreme absolutist wing of the GOP. The hallmark mark signs and symptoms of extreme conservatism have a known etiology. Including but not limited to: dogmatism; fear and aggression; and extreme intolerance of ambiguity.
This is expressed as an overwhelming desire to return to a time that never was. That mythical idealized time of unquestioning patriotism, moral certainty, and condoned inequality. That glorious past when everything was black and white, and the need for nuance or shades of gray was non-existent as everybody knew their place.
Unfortunately the need for a minority to desire to live in a time that never was has real world consequences for everybody else. Unnecessary wars, failed economic policies, and the desire for comfort over empirical truth finds us where we are today. America, after eight long years of this ongoing nightmare may never fully recover from all these false certainties masquerading as immutable truth.
The Limbaugh’s of this world are smart enough to never put themselves in the position where there fallacious reasoning, lies, distortions and opinions can be exposed for the absolute nonsense they are. And his rabid fans will never take the time required for self reflection and the knowledge that the sophistry of all the GOP info-tainers will never be able to pass critical scrutiny in the so called market place of ideas.
Oxycontin may ease the pain of all the noise that tells you what a empty vessel you really are, needing to be in a constant opiated haze in a world filled with people and ideas you can never hope to understand, and your affliction makes you despise. Dreams,in your case should only have consequences for the dreamer.